Since My Mom’s Diagnosis With Dementia Five Years Ago, I Worry if I’m Next
I want to remember all my yesterdays
Yesterday I ran a marathon, finished my PhD, and lived in a foreign country.
Yesterday I fell in love, had my heart broken, and became a mother.
My yesterdays are chock full of choices, relationships, and experiences that made me who I am today.
I want to remember all of them.
I want to remember the sound of my son Charlie’s voice as a baby — deep and expressive, wonderment in every breath. I want to remember the way my daughter Izzy used to sleep on my shoulder, and then how she refused to take my hand once she learned to run.
Picture books, sippy cups, the dog at our feet, jogging to the park with the kids in the double stroller, visits with Santa, tiny legs pumping on the swings. The big and little moments all add up to an amazing collection.
I want to hang on to it all, even the moments I’m not proud of — the longest minute of my life, when I lost two-year-old Izzy in a crowded parking lot, the times my husband and I argued and learned to forgive. I want to remember the lessons of yesterday that taught me to be present and live for today.
But I don’t get to decide which memories I keep, which ones move out of my grasp with age, or which ones disappear with the cruel fate of dementia.
My mind can easily take me back to the beautiful view on the top of the hill outside Florence where I ran every morning of the magical year I lived in Italy. But I can’t remember my password for the online PTA directory at my kids’ school. I remember the red blouse and tulle-trimmed skirt I wore the night my husband proposed to me on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, but this morning I could not remember the name of our vet’s office across town.
I know it’s a natural part of aging to forget some things. But how do you know if you are forgetting more than normal? Yesterday I forgot my phone in my car when I went to work, then I forgot my earbuds in my office when I went to the gym. I had to contact the department administrator at the university medical center where I work to reschedule yet another missed appointment.
What’s normal?
Since my Mom’s diagnosis with dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease five years ago, I wonder. I worry. Do other people my age regularly miss appointments and forget their phones?
I find it harder to remember scientific papers I’ve read, areas of my research I once knew inside and out now seem fuzzy and distant. Maybe I am going in too many directions at once. Maybe it’s the added stress of this pandemic. It could be any one or all of these things. And it could be something more.
My mom’s dementia has erased whole chunks of time from her mind. Memories swim out of reach where she can no longer access them. I wonder if the changes are small at first if you don’t really notice anything out of the ordinary. And after you start to notice, what then? How does that change the way you live, the decisions you make, and the person you are?
I want to remember the time I saw the great pyramids of Egypt, the first word Izzy spoke, and the unique properties of the major protein I’ve studied in my academic research for almost two decades.
I want to remember how I celebrated my 29th birthday, how I felt on my wedding day, the joy of watching my children learn to ride a bike. I want to remember yesterday like today — all the amazing yesterdays that make a life.
Who would I be without them?
Paige Geiger is a Professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine where she researches ways to prevent and cure Alzheimer’s Disease. By early morning light, she is writing a memoir about the year she worked at the University of Florence, Italy as a young, naive, and ambitious scientist. Follow her on Instagram @paigegeiger_writes.
